--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote: Hum, yeees. Thoughts on tc, Toby, and Giskart (among others) comments on vandalism (reference : pure nasty vandalism : bots, porn images and so on...not "hard to integrate" participants) Vandalism does not only occur on the english wikipedia, but also on the international ones, even if, fortunately, attacks are infinitly less frequent and less destructive in terms of volume. Having far less participants, non-english wikipedias do not "work" 'round the clock. There are periods of time when nobody is watching, and nobody can react to an attack. To speak of the case I know, there is very often noone between 2am and 5am, and sometimes noone between 9am to 12am on the fr:wiki. Or when somebody is around, it's often a newcomer. If any vandalism was to occur from an anonymous ip, we are only 3 sysops to be able to ban it anyway. Last monday at the end of the afternoon, a loggued-in unknown user replaced the fr:homepage with a porn picture (not as bad as the goatse, but still not one that is appropriate for kids to see amha). Another anonymous ip later replaced the picture by a single line basically stating 'this is an encyclopedia, please don't do that' (hence, he was obviously not one of the old hands, otherwise, he would have reverted the whole page). I came around 20 mn later, and clean all. This was fortunately a very minor vandalism (in terms of page). Athymik has been pointing out to us about a month ago how damaging a bot running (loggued, behind proxy, several ip addresses) could be. Projection : if a bot run on the fr:wiki between 2am to 5am and changes 2 pages per minute, the total number of pages which could be vandalized is 360 (ain't I mastering calculus pretty well ?). I.e., more than 10% of total pages right now. Vandalism issues should not be treated language separated. That is a global issue. Any knife cut in one wiki as consequences on all wikis. Should the international homepages be replaced by a goatse image 3 hours per week, my belief is that the english wikipedia image would one day suffer from it - Global public image issue, no ? I support system that could automatically detect a potential problem. It is very likely that - one user/ip saving every minute for more than 10 mn is a potential problem - any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by x characters (except redirect...) is a potential problem - any edit replacing more than xxxx characters by an image that was downloaded less than tt minutes before is a potential problem But, then, what good would it do, if an automatic system detect a potential problem but has no human to warn ? Some time ago, I raised the point of multi-wiki vandalism (jumping through links). It was interpretated as a personal whinning over consequences interlangage links could have on minor wikis...Bah, no. Really no. I am too happy with the links ! I had the front-idea in mind that a vandal on one wiki, could also damage another wiki, so it could be interesting somehow that a common system of reporting existed, where maybe some connections could be made between one vandal here and one vandal there. For quicker and more effective reactivity. With the back-idea that vandalism was a global issue, and had to be considered including all wikis. I mean : detection, human warning (in case of automatic detection), human action to stop vandalism, human action to revert vandalism. If an international wiki is plagued by gore images every week or so, thus damaging the image of the whole project, if en.wikipedians has to come to help to clean up 360 pages in a row, the issue is not local, it's global. I'd like not to hear "but, vandalism on international wikis is a rare occurence". Yep, just as petrol ships crushing on french, spanish and portuguese coasts are a rare occurence. About every couple of years. Rare, but damaging, no ? I see everywhere references to the exxon waldez. Well, our last disaster was in 1999, the Erika was an *absolutely* similar boat to the Prestige. Same age, some construction type, same content, same "pavillon de complaisance". Are we gonna do nothing just because it is a rare occurence ? In the past two months, we noticed there were people coming through links, not because they were nominally invited, but followed google. If they come, vandals will come. Anticipation, prevention... I like the idea of automatic detection. I'd like it to be coupled with a system of automatic reaction (not banning, rather slowing down save for example). But, mostly, it should have an ACTIVE system of COMMUNITY warning. Maybe, different levels of warning. Maybe automatic emails to a list or to a board. Maybe an automatic signal to bilingual people. Something. Peace __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com

--- Toby Bartels <toby+wikipedia(a)math.ucr.edu> wrote: This seems like all good ideas to me. Now, the tough point is how to detect mostly vandalism, but not confuse good users with vandals... Mav said multilanguage >Phase IV, Very likely yes different >languages periodically to check for obvious vandalism. if en.wiki >sysops popped in to check various other languages periodically >(esp. during the no, or slow edit times you talk about) then >that should provide better coverage against the most blatant >goat sex type vandalism and vandal bots. That's a tough point really. Theoretically, it sounds natural that somebody trusted for one wiki should be trusted on another (though, to be honest...I am not convinced myself). Practically, that's could be a problem unfortunately. The english wiki process while deciding who should be a sysop or not is done through peer review (general behavior, respect to the community standards...). But, communities don't have the same standards, and what is ok on one could be hardly tolerable on another. And the tobe-sysop being not known, how would it be ok to accept somebody you don't know (say would you blindly accept Shaihulud as a sysop ?), while you reject somebody you know, just on the behalf he is refusing to change his name ? I know you Mav, so I would say "yes, please, come and help us", and I thank you very much for your proposition. But why would other french agree for somebody they don't know to have more admin "power" than they have ? Btw, didnot tmc changed his name as the community was 'kindly' asking him ? __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus � Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com